Habits
by DreamScene
Summary: Despite himself, he keeps watch over her. Like a vigil for the dead, he can't stop but mourn as well. Miroku/Kagome


Pairing: Miroku/Kagome

Genre: Romance/Angst

Rating: PG 13ish, T, whatever

Summary: Despite himself, he keeps watch over her. Like a vigil for the dead, he can't stop but mourn as well.

A/N: Another foray into first person perspective. Please tell me your thoughts by clicking on the box at the bottom of the screen. I love feedback and any constructive criticism helps. Thanks!

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She had the bad habit of watching misplaced wandering souls at night. Her obsession had come along in the wake of slow realization that she wasn't meant for the hanyou who was constantly oblivious to the heartache he himself provoked.

It was her way of dealing I suppose. It had nothing to do with the occasional trail of excuses for why her eyes grew unnaturally bright at the sound of her predecessor's name, I'm sure.

She stared again, at the trees across the stream, and began falling apart at the seams easily, like a flower whose petals were plucked in deliberate violence. It happened every time when he disappointed her. She reminded me of her pillow when Shippo pulled out a thread and the insides came out, fluffy and soft. But she wasn't made of things that dreams rested on.

She was real, more real than Inuyasha liked to see or understand.

I hate to use similes, but she seemed an awful lot like a dandelion that would fall apart at the slightest breeze.

Lost souls had floated into the grove of trees on the opposite bank of the creek. Kikyo, obviously had been the emergency that made him run toward the thick woods.

In the impending disaster that had begun to unfold, he had dropped his cup of ramen noodles with her love and hadn't bothered looking back.

I supposed she was still reeling from his sudden escape even if she smiled reassuringly at Shippo. I looked away in time to see the kitsune embrace her.

She would come around sooner or later. She always did.

It was a waiting game from then on, and eventually I'd play the part of her confessor as I listen to her purge the bitterness and selfishness in her heart. All of those things she wouldn't dare tell him but couldn't always contain.

Sometimes when I look through her bag (though I admit it's Shippo's fault that I've discovered pocky), she had strange reading material. Her books of a future tell of distant places – planets they call them, too far for anyone to actually step foot on and difficult to see with ordinary eyes.

And then there are those things; magazines, she explained to me once. They advise girls to lose weight, to cover their faces with paint, and to find someone called "the one."

It makes little sense that all those girls would waste their time on a vaguely defined person. For a while there, it made me wish my name was "The One" at the thought of so many females flocking after me.

What a dream that would be.

And yet, it makes no sense to make so much effort that will be ignored in the end. Especially Kagome. She's bled and breathed for Inuyasha. Yet, even I can see that he's too stubborn to waver from ill-defined promises.

In the end, she'll always be last in line, waiting on the scraps that remained of his attention. In that way, she was just like me.

I kept waiting.

About the only one not focused on romantic entanglements was Sango. She was and would always be beautiful, detached and focused Sango. She would never care and I would not encourage her to.

And while she and Kagome worked well together, she was not the one Kagome turned to in times of despair. It was me who found her, pushing in whatever strength she had left over from the latest letdown Inuyasha had incurred.

'Isn't that the point of everything?' she asked me once.

Everything is nothing. Nothing is everything. There's something about the emptiness that makes it all right. And I think that perhaps Buddha had it right all along and that eventually, there isn't anything worth holding on to. They bring suffering, right?

Then again, she had been nearly finished my bottle of sake that time. Philosophy had flowed easily from her, and somehow she'd managed to be lucid enough to lecture me about Sango. If only she had realized what she was saying . . .

I doubt that beings out there would be suffering so willingly like this. And yet I believe I found the one person who would.

She was learning acceptance though, and it was killing something inside her. Perhaps it was hope, but I knew better. Just an attachment. It was a way to let go and a hard lesson she took like bitter medicine that burned with its aftertaste as it went.

It would help in the long run. At least it should (and I hoped as much). Only time would tell though, even as I studied her from under the cover of a weeping willow.

She'd ignored the darkening clouds overhead, which were probably as dark as her mood (and those eyes, always those eyes that hungered for the same looks she gave). The rumbling thunder did not startle or deter her from moving away from the boulder she had grown a liking to in the past hour or so.

He'd come back of course, not exactly feeling bad for making her shiver in damp clothes atop a cold rock.

Time ticked by too slowly for her.

She kept waiting.

It went by too fast for me.

Even if her arms didn't physically open up and greet him, she wasn't good at hiding her emotions very well, at least in my eyes. She didn't dare betray the pain she was enduring, but only asked him how his recent meeting with the version of herself she didn't recognize had gone. There was a distinct lack of malicious sentiment in her voice.

All was well, he'd said.

She believed him.

All was well, she said later, trying to hide those glassy eyes. Unlike what Inuyasha thought, her warmth, her frustration, her tears—all of her genuine working part that wanted nothing more than him—mourned for what she had never had in the first place. In a sick, cyclical way I realized it was the way two of them loved—by chasing after those they could never have. And somehow, I'd been sucked into this strange vortex of misleading affections.

I waited inevitably for her that night, as I always would.

She wasn't giving up and I realized I wasn't either.


End file.
